


a reverence unimpaired

by mishcollin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, M/M, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mishcollin/pseuds/mishcollin
Summary: Dean’s got a taste like grit in his mouth the whole ride home from the church. (Post-11.18 coda.)





	a reverence unimpaired

**Author's Note:**

> (This isn't a new fic; I'm just copying stuff from my tumblr for safekeeping.)

Dean’s got a taste like grit in his mouth the whole ride home from the church. He pokes his tongue into a canker sore he can feel splitting open on the soft inside of his left cheek—maybe he’d gotten it from biting down too hard. He prods at it punitively, relishing the sharp sting that pricks at his eyes—they feel rheumy as is, glazed and focused on nothing in particular. Just the rhythmic linear chug of the windshield wipers, the slick road ahead, rain rattling the inside of the Impala like pebbles in a tin can.

“Dean?” Sam asks, quiet, almost too quiet under the sound of the storm. “You want me to drive for a bit?”

“I’m fine,” Dean says, and his voice sounds parched, like it’s gone rusty from disuse. Seared behind his eyes, he can see the orange hollows and sharp shadows on Cas’ face in the glow of holy fire, curving the features into something unfamiliar. Alien. Unwelcome. Evil. Not Cas. The smarting sensation starts up behind his eyes again, and he tastes asphalt in his mouth again. He closes his eyes.

“Let me,” Sam pleads, and Dean just shakes his head, hoping somehow Sam will pick up on some unspoken cue to let this be.

Silence for a moment, and then Sam says, in a low, pained voice, “This wasn’t your fault, Dean. There was nothing you could’ve done—“

“I’m fine,” Dean repeats, the mechanical answer to a question that hadn’t been asked, and Sam flicks a concerned glance up at him but Dean’s still fixed squarely on the road.

“We’ll get him back, Dean,” Sam says. “I know we will.”

Dean gives a single nod. “We will.”

“We will.”

He knows the echoes ring hollow to both of them, but he keeps driving. Not a word is spoken for the rest of the drive.

—

The bunker isn’t the same without him. Same could be said for any of them, of course—Kevin, Charlie. Dean’s had a whole lifetime’s worth of finding ghosts, but theirs, for whatever reason, seem carefully out of reach. Haunting the cavernous drafty rooms, like he can still hear their voices, teasing laughs and taunts and complaints, locked in an echo chamber. Sometimes he wonders if emptiness can create presence that way—maybe a different kind of ghost, one that he can’t burn out with salt, gasoline and a match.

Cas, though—Dean sees him in every room. Sees him ruffled with sleep and burning eggs brown in the kitchen with a perplexed scowl, sees him curled up on the couch watching  _Kitchen Nightmares_ reruns under ratty gray blankets, sees him carefully separating blacks and whites before he dumps them in the washing machine. Dean stands on the overhang of the bunker, one hand gripped on the railing, the strap of his duffel digging into his shoulder. He’s got this choked feeling in his throat that he can’t swallow. He feels Sam briskly clap him on the shoulder, but barely registers the touch.

Is it possible to be haunted by someone who’s still alive? Years of hunting have done a piss-poor job of answering that, or providing any relief from it, for that matter.

“I’ll order a pizza,” Sam says, swinging his bag over the back of the chair.

“Do you think he’s awake?” Dean asks. He hadn’t meant to ask it. The question rings around the bunker like the crack of a gun.

Sam stills, looking up at Dean with something like sympathy. “What?”

Dean swallows, tightening his knuckles on the rail. “Y’know. Do you think he’s….conscious? That he knows what’s going on?”

Sam puffs out a slow breath, his chest bowing with the motion. He drops his head slightly to study the table. “It’s hard to say, Dean.” The answer sounds minced and careful. “I mean, with the Gadreel thing, whenever he was in the driver’s seat, I was knocked out. It was more like a dream than anything. But I can tell you from, uh, personal experience that Lucifer’s a sadistic fuck, so.” He shrugs wearily. “Who knows.”

Dean drops his head to study the dry cracks on his hands, the dark scabs on his knuckles, saying nothing for several moments.

Sam’s voice is gentle when he speaks next—not malicious, but firm nonetheless. “He chose this, Dean.”

“Stop saying that,” Dean snaps, moving toward the steps. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Dean—”

“I said don’t.”

“Okay,” Sam says, tone carefully blank. “But all I’m saying is it might help you….I dunno, get where he’s coming from if you understand why he did it.”

Dean doesn’t want to think about that. Doesn’t want to think about it one fucking bit. He grabs a beer from the kitchen, slams the fridge shut with his foot, and heads to bed without another word.

—

It takes Dean a long time to fall asleep. Which, fair enough, best friend being possessed by Satan does that to a guy. He’s still got the image of Cas trapped in holy fire burned behind his eyes, those brief seconds where Dean had seen the familiarity, the pain and the confusion in his expression; he’d almost looked like he wanted to reach out, reach back across the flames—

When Dean blinks, he’s in the main room of the bunker. It  _feels_ like he’s dreaming, par for the course, but something seems….off, somehow. Like there are a few lines, chairs, belongings shifted out of place.

A movement flutters the corner of his eye, and he turns.

Cas is there, staring at him, two dark tufts of hair in disarray, like he’s been windswept straight into the room. For a moment, they do nothing but blink at each other, before Dean startles them both by laughing—a dark, wry chuckle that wrings itself out of him.

“Damn, this is fucked up,” he says to fake-Cas, making a wide, dismissive gesture with a hand to the rest of the bunker. He lets it fall at his side with a thwack against his jean-leg. “I mean, even for me.”

“What,” Cas says, slowly,  “are you talking about.”

“Fake you,” Dean says. He waves a hand again. “Fake bunker. More of my subconscious dicking with me, a day ending with -y.”

Cas stares at him uncomprehendingly, completely still, his hands hanging by his sides.

“You’re not real,” he tells fake-Cas. “None of this is. You know, like a Jedi mind-trick. Another name, another nightmare, another—”

“Dean,” Cas interrupts him. His image suddenly, strangely glitches—like a spritz on an empty television channel. “It’s me—the real me.”

“Funny. That’s exactly something fake dream Cas would say.”

Cas takes a step toward him, deliberate and measured, and some current seems to palpably shift, like the gravity in the room’s sliding under their feet.

“We talked,” Cas says uncertainly, stopping in front of Dean, and something in him, even in a dream, aches viscerally at the sight of him, so close, so true to life. The misshapen coat, the crooked, backwards tie, the sad, familiar eyes, color like the faded jeans in Cas’ hamper that Dean hasn’t had the heart to wash. He’s itching to reach out and touch, but his hands remain at his sides.

When this doesn’t register a response, Cas continues, his brow creasing, “We talked for just a moment, in the church, before I lost control. I saw you, you were trying to—to tell me something.”

Dean’s heart starts pounding even as he takes a slight step back. The physical image, the vivid setting, Cas’ mannerisms, are all so carefully rendered that he almost believes it, almost lets himself buy into it hook line and sinker, but that kind of hope would be…dangerous. Lethal.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself,” Dean hears himself say. “I mean, I torture myself enough when I’m awake, right?”

Cas is directly in front of him now, his eyes fixed earnestly, plaintively on him. “Dean.”

Cas reaches out one hand hesitantly, tentative, like he isn’t sure it’s real either, his fingertips slowly curling outward. Dean takes a shaking breath and reaches back, almost like extending toward a mirror, and for just a moment, his fingers slide through the image of Cas’ skin, like it’s a hologram or a smoke mirage, but he feels the same electric shift and the touch crystallizes under him. The breath is punched out of him when he feels the solid warmth of Cas’ fingers pushing back against his with equal, soft pressure before Cas just as haltingly slides his fingers until they’re interlaced with Dean’s, then he squeezes.

“You’re not real,” Dean says, and he can feel his voice trembling even as his hand tightens in Cas’, fitting to the familiar, sturdy shape. “You can’t be.”

“Please,” Cas says, and there’s such a cloying desperation in the word that Dean’s fingers disentangle, then curl disbelievingly in the soft worn sleeve of Cas’ trenchcoat, traveling up the bridge of his arm further until he’s cupping the side of Cas’ neck. He’s got a thumb against the stubble of Cas’ jaw now and it feels real, so real, that his body is humming with it, trying to wake up, to shake this—

“Dean,” Cas says in alarm, and his image spits and flickers for a moment. “Please—don’t wake up, don’t go.”

“Hey, I’m here,” Dean says, but it sounds somehow like his voice is caroming down a long tunnel. Cas closes the remaining distance between them and all of the stoicism, the sturdiness, the inflexible static  _thing_ that Castiel is seems to soften completely into the embrace, his shoulders sagging and his hands winding up to grip vice-like on either of Dean’s shoulder-blades. Dean’s breath is punched out of him in a choked sound—it feels too  _real,_ warm, steady, and he finds himself clinging back, burying his face in the bridge of Cas’ shoulder, then shifting up so he can press his nose into the crescent hollow behind Cas’ ear.

“I didn’t know if,” Cas says to his collarbone. “I didn’t know if I’d ever, if we’d ever—”

“You’ve got me scared shitless,” Dean says on a shaky laugh, tightening his arms around Cas’ back. “Fuck, I’m so pissed at you.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas says, his voice muffled by Dean’s shirt. “It seemed like the only option at the time.”

“You’re such…” Dean squeezes his eyes shut and bops his forehead against Cas’ shoulder in remonstration. “You’re such a dumbass sometimes, Christ.”

“I know.”

“I mean, friggin’  _Satan,_ Cas, for fuck’s sake—”

“I know.”

“Are you okay?”

Cas pulls back at that, his face smoothed over and empty of expression, eyes like hollow stones. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve always been such a shit liar.”

A muscle at the corner of Cas’ mouth twitches before he stubbornly tightens his mouth. “I’m  _fine_ , Dean.”

“Yeah, okay, well. I hate to be the one that tells you this, but the plan’s a bust.”

Something flares up in Cas’ expression at that, a spark of surprise or dismay. “What?”

“Yeah, the whole ‘Lucifer icing the Darkness’ thing’s a no-go. He can’t take Amara.”

Cas takes a wide step back, his face going blank. “So that means—”

And what’s Dean supposed say then—that Cas’ self-sacrificing martyr quest of devil possession was all for  _nothing_? That’s exactly what it means, but he can’t bring himself to say it, not out loud.

Cas narrows his eyes, and Dean can practically see the gears churning in his brain, already strategizing. “There has to be another way from this vantage point.”

“No, Cas, there  _is_ no other way, alright? Enough with the possession crap. Sam and I are gonna get you out.”

“You don’t need t—”

“Cas.”

“ _Dean._ ”

There’s a sharp, loaded silence for a moment before Dean speaks to break it, his voice splintering. “Why, Cas?”

Cas carefully keeps the distance between them, but his thumb glides along the seam of his pocket, a nervous tell.

“Why did you—” The crushing sensation from earlier is back, the taut throat and the stinging eyes and the sandy dryness in his mouth. “What would ever make you think that—”

Cas’ shoulders, puffed up in some form of self-defense, slowly deflate, his expression hollowing out, wilting into something fierce and devastated before he says, quietly, “I had to.”

“No, you didn’t fucking  _have_  to. We have a million other ways we can figure this out,  _together,_ with you back home with Sam and me—”

“All I am to you two is a burden and a liability,” Cas says, and the words seem like they hurt to say, clipped through his teeth. His fidgeting hand stills and curls into a fist. “You can’t tell me otherwise, Dean. I’m—you’ve seen for yourself, I’m useless, I sit around and watch network cable at the bunker for days to avoid getting cursed, killed, what have you, and this—this was a way that I could stop her, that I could—that I could save you.”

Dean stares at him like he’s been slapped.

“I didn’t,” he says, his voice giving out for a moment before he closes his eyes and tries again. “I never asked you for this. I never  _wanted_ you to do this. This is—this is fucked up six ways from Sunday, so please don’t stand there and tell me this is somehow for me, my fault, because I never wanted you to—”

He’s spiraling; the concept of Cas so close but so unreachable is suddenly agonizing, and he clenches his teeth against whatever’s resting acidic on the tip of his tongue.

“This was my choice,” Cas says, much more gently than before, and Dean blinks his eyes open when he feels a warm hand clasped on his shoulder. “If there was even a chance that I could stop this from consuming you, that I could save you from whatever hell it is you’ve been enduring the past year—”

“Pulling me out of hell once was enough,” Dean snaps, yanking away from Cas’ touch. “I didn’t ask you for any more goddamned favors, alright? The only thing—seriously, Cas, the  _only_ thing I’m asking of you is to not die, for Christ’s sake, is it that fucking difficult?”

“Please,” Cas says in a low voice, dropping his eyes. “We have so little time together, can we—can we please not fight.”

Dean lets the heat, the anger circuit through him for a few more seconds before he reluctantly relaxes, trying to unbend some of the tension from his shoulders. “Alright. Fine. What  _do_ you want to do, then?”

“Just….” Cas gives a helpless shake of his head before he says, “Just stay with me, for just a couple more moments. It’s…lonely here, and I’ve missed you more than you can imagine.”

Dean makes a strangled, wounded-cat noise. Then says, “Oh.” He clears his throat, the tips of his ears prickling with heat. “Yeah, well. Um. I’ve—it ain’t been easy around here without you, either.”

Cas motions with his head in an unworded request toward the familiar couch, seated in front of the TV, and Dean follows him, still feeling something like gravel caught in his chest, something acidic and hard and painful.

Cas shucks his trenchcoat and drapes it over the spine of the couch, then toes off his shoes one at a time; he curls up against the arm of the couch and Dean follows, their sides pressed together.

Cas hesitantly unfolds his hand, held palm-up, lotus-like, and Dean takes it in his, cupping his other hand on the outside of Cas’. Cas sighs, a long, tired sound, but when Dean looks up, the worried creases in his forehead have smoothed out, his eyes soft.

“You’re such a dick,” Dean grumbles, but the protest is half-hearted; he leans in so that his body aligns with the lines of Cas’.

Cas laughs quietly, the sound catching in his throat in a warm hum, as he rubs a thumb over the ridges of Dean’s knuckles.

“How do I know this is real?” Dean asks, and in some ways, it already feels like the dream is fading—like somewhere, he’s trying to wake himself up. “Or if I’ll even remember this?”

“I will,” Cas says with conviction. “I’ll remember it.”

“We’re coming for you, Cas,” Dean says, his eyelids hooding, the bunker darkening at the edges. “I swear to you, I won’t rest until you’re home. Safe. With us—with me.”

Cas’ other hand reaches up fondly to rub at the fuzz of hair on Dean’s temple, and Dean tilts into the touch with a deep sigh.

“Dean,” Cas murmurs, and Dean swears, for just a hazy moment, that he feels a kiss pressed to the crown of his head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

That’s how Dean comes to, with a sharp, choking gasp into a dark room, his sheets soaked in sweat. For a long time, he lies there with his heart pounding in his chest like a bass drum, and he waits for the morning.


End file.
